Annapolis police need to mind their p’s and q’s. Or at least their p’s.

Some city residents have taken note recently of a patrol car in which the city’s name is misspelled on one side as “Annappolis.” That’s one p too many.

The misspelling was pointed out on the Friends of Annapolis Facebook page. A photo of the vehicle was posted with a humorous caption evoking the cartoon character Scooby Doo: “Rut roh — who’s going to tell them?”

Alan Cook of Annapolis noticed the misspelled city name on the police car while dropping his daughter off at school.

“I just glanced over at it, and it was misspelled,” Cook said, chuckling.

Annapolis Police spokesman Bernie Bennett said there’s a simple explanation for how the errant p wiggled into the city’s name on the patrol car. The rear passenger-side door was damaged and needed to be replaced.

The replacement door came from a vehicle that had its wrapping, covering and painting done in a different order than the original. As a result, the letters “Annap” on the replacement rear side door merge with “polis” on the original front side door. Car wrapping, as defined by Kelly Blue Book, involves applying vinyl film with an adhesive backing onto a vehicle’s surface.

APD has been aware of the problem for some time. However, the priority was to get the car back on the road. The entire vehicle would need to be rewrapped to fix the error, which can be costly, Bennett said. He said he wasn’t exactly sure when it would be fixed.

“The plan,” Bennett said, “is at some point to cover that mistake.”